South Park creators discuss Stick of Truth’s protracted development

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone briefly discussed the upcoming South Park RPG, The Stick of Truth, during their panel at this weekend’s Comic-Con. According to Parker and Stone, their excitement over the project lead them to become a little overly ambitious with the game.

Parker said that the original script that Stone and him wrote for the game was over 850 pages, far larger than the average video game script. Parker says the game’s developers at Obsidian told him to “cut it down, cut it down, cut it down,” and “that everyone kept saying to us [turn the extra content into] DLC,” a statement which drew boo’s from the crowd, to which Parker responded “I agree, fuck that.”

While some of the content that Parker and Stone wrote for the game didn’t made it into the final product, the writing duo says that their unused ideas from the game will be reincorporated into the show. The two originally planned for the story of the game to tie into a story arc within the show that would span a whole season, but they ditched those plans in favor of creating a stand alone story that players could enjoy without having to watch the show.

The Stick of Truth was originally supposed to be published by THQ, who went bankrupt earlier this year. When asked about that situation during the fan Q&A, the two joked that their first response was a relieved “Oh good, it’s over!” The two have since met with representatives from Ubisoft, the new publishers of the game, and they say they’re excited about the project again.

When asked about what games they enjoyed playing and what games influenced the development of Stick of Truth, Parker revealed that he is a huge fan of Nintendo’s Earthbound (which was released for the Wii U Virtual Console yesterday,) saying “I love that feeling that EarthBound has… [it makes you feel like] a little kid in a big world.” The pair also said that they’ve played a lot of Skyrim, Paper Mario, Crash Bandicoot, and The Legend of Zelda.

South Park: The Stick of Truth will be released for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC sometime before the end of the year.